Eco-Ecuador
Collaboration for a Long-Term Sustainable City
April 1-16, 2009 Summary: Volunteers Aaron and Maggie help Jaime and I take care of the tasks at hand. The major undertaking completed in the past two weeks has been preparation and planting of seedbeds. First, a truckload of river sand (salt-free) was acquired to mix with other compost ingredients. We had to go south beyond the town of Charapoto to find river sand in a […]
March 6-31, 2009 Summary: Another action-packed month passes by. Volunteers disperse and continue with their travels; and as their numbers dwindle, the rainy season seems to be petering out. The transition out of the rainy season means that changing the workload to adapt to the shift in weather. In total this year, eleven revegetation sites have been successfully planted with over 2,200 native trees in the […]
March 25, 2009 Hi, Things are going very well. Multiple really, really nice light but substantial rains this past week. Volunteers have died down from 15+ to 4, which feels like nothing in comparison. Things will remain relatively light on this front for another month or two and then pick up again come May/June. I’m looking forward to having a little breather. The summer months […]
February 1-March 9, 2009 Summary: So much to cover, and it all happened in one month!? 10th anniversary of the Eco-city. Tree planting. Myriads of volunteers. Rains. Ridiculously fast growing weeds. Land visits and field trips. I’m going to stick to the field work, since Peter has covered a lot of the Bahia happenings in his Dispatches. I will also rely on photos to show more of […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador The high-pitched enthusiasm of Carnaval is building and an interviewer/photographer team from Taiwan’s Spirit magazine has arrived to report on Eco-Bahia, requesting a tour by me through Bosque en Medio de las Ruinas “wild park.” We were graced with a rainless day to climb down the steps at the farthest entrance accompanied by Patricio Tamariz (who had arranged for the Taiwanese visit), Clay and several Planet […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador Planet Drum’s plans to build a Bioregional Sustainability Institute (BSI) on property that was acquired for that purpose three years ago just took a great step toward. Jaeson Schultz, our land partner in the original purchase of sixty hectares of undeveloped land, is here for a few months and joined Clay and I on an exploratory visit accompanied by Mark Hebard and […]
Mark HebardVolunteer and HenchpersonFebruary 18, 2009 [Mark has been aiding and abetting Planet Drum’s activities from San Francisco for the past six years. He traveled with Peter Berg to Bahia this February.] The last two days in Ecuador have been strenuous and inspiring. Yesterday Peter and I traveled with all the volunteers by ferry across the bay to San Vicente and then by bus up […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador It is a particularly hard winter of blizzards this year in the Northern Hemisphere and a hot summer marked by forest fires in the Southern, but in Ecuador where sharply defined seasons elsewhere are equatorially ambiguous it is the time of rain at night and, if there is no blanket of gray overcast, baking sun during the day. Downpours range from […]
December 29, 2008-January 16, 2009 Summary: House repairs continued. Stakes for tree markers are cut and painted. A new site at Bosque Encantado is created. Completed house repairs include (but are not limited to): hiring a contractor to repaint the front of the house, refinishing the Planet Drum sign, repairing the sign’s metal hanger that was in danger of falling to the sidewalk below, overhauling a […]
December 8-26, 2008 Summary: Despite imminent signs of the rainy season (increased humidity, blazingly intense sun, warm nights, etc) it hasn’t arrived yet, so we took advantage of the time to further prepare ourselves for planting by clearing more trails and digging more holes. I stepped up volunteer recruitment with a new volunteer announcement that I distributed in Canoa and to hostals around Ecuador. Also, I […]